Professor was very sweet and accommodating. She taught lectures well and listening to her gave you a pretty good understanding of the course material overall. I would def take another geography class with her again.

This class covers a variety of great content. The lecture material was relevant and important. I believe it would appeal to a variety of interests. There was a lot of decently long readings every week, so the workload is a bit heavy. The midterm and final also take a lot of time, but I did feel prepared for them due to my discussion sections and the lectures. Professor Faier was very good about keeping connection with the class despite the lectures being asynchronous. She was communicative through emails and encouraged us to come to office hours so she could get to know us. I appreciated this a lot! If you have time to devote to readings, I would absolutely recommend this class.

Amazing professor! The content in this class was relevant and very interesting. Professor Faier's Lectures are great and she explains the readings very well. There is quite a lot of reading, in my opinion, but it is all super interesting so it does not feel too bad when reading. If you can, take this class with MARITZA as your TA! They are an amazing TA. Because of them and the discussions we had in section, I felt prepared for the Midterm and Final. Both the midterm and final are 3 mini essays about the readings but you are given like 5-6 days to complete them. Overall this was a fun class and would definitely recommend taking it as a GE.

She is so nice! I took the class asynchronously, which was honestly really nice because her lectures were super clear and explained all the readings really well. There is a ton of reading honestly and some of them are kind of difficult to understand but she explains them in the lecture so it works out fine. I feel like it is pretty important to do most of the readings. The midterm and final both consist of three essays that you have a weekend to work on and the questions all put the authors of the readings in some sort of dialogue.

I took this class for my major (and also got ge credit yay) and found it really interesting!! The lectures are all recorded so it’s easy to fall behind if, like me, you forget to do them lol but going to her zoom office hours made the class feel a lot more personal!! It’s also required that you go to two of them, but I recommend going to as many as you can! Professor Faier is so nice, and my TA Zachary Frial is also really great!!

There’s no tests at all, just a one page reading reflection due every other week, and the midterm and final are both just three short essay questions. Basically if you do the lectures and readings (which can be a lot so don’t get too behind) and participate in class then you’ll be fine! Also we didn’t have a textbook, just various readings from different sources.

I learned a lot from this class, and gained an interesting new perspective on how people interact with the world around them. Also it’s an easy A!! I definitely recommend this class :)

30% midterm essay
33% final essay
35% discussion section participation
2% go to 2 office hours sessions

This class was very interesting. Professor Faier is very nice, helpful, and clear when teaching. The only assignments are six 500-600-word reading reflection essays throughout the course, but only 5 are necessary. Even then, it is hard to get an A on these assignments because the TAs grade pretty harshly. All of my papers got grades of 80-85/100 because my TA gave average grades of 80, unless you go above and beyond in your writing. Slides are posted and very detailed, so you might be able to get away with not going to the lectures, but she did mention implementing iClicker questions in the future due to lack of attendance (of course, this isn't confirmed)... There is no midterm, only a final, which is honestly pretty extensive. The final includes a section for definitions for a set of words, short answer questions where you connect different concepts from class based on a prompt, and finally an essay that she expects to be around 2-3 pages. While the course is not too bad, for this to be a GE course, it is unnecessarily hard to get an A. I don't really think this class is worth it if you can find a GE that's a bit more relaxed, but if you have to take it, or sustainability is a big interest of yours, it's definitely not the worst.

This class was relatively easy but the workload is kind of a hassle. There is a weekly discussion post that you need to do and discussion participation is mandatory (but basically just show up and it's fine). The midterm and final are three essays that you can take home, they take work and time. One of the TAs definitely marks harsher than the other. But if you arrange your time well it is an easy GE.

depends on TA. my TA would make the average for our papers average 80%. they're super stingy with points. overall an interesting class. the final is just defining terms and an essay in person.

Prof. Faier is an interesting lecturer and overall I enjoyed the content of the class. There are 2-3 readings/videos per week which are usually not too long. The class has weekly participation based assignments that you have to be in class for which are usually based on the readings (which are easy, and she allows you to miss 3 of them I think), and then a midterm and final test (multiple choice + short essay). The workload was easy to manage and overall I would recommend the class if it's for your major. It's not bad for an elective esp if you're interested in Japan but there are easier ones out there imo. She provides study guides of all the specific terms and concepts we should be familiar with for the final and midterm, but I felt that some of the questions were worded confusingly and I got them wrong even though I knew the content and understood the concepts.

Although if there are any questions that no one gets correct on the test, she doesn't count them for the final grades. she's fairly receptive to feedback about the in class assignments and generally friendly, although I personally found her to be condescending when I was confused about some of the questions on the midterm, so I never went to her office hours.

This is more of a sociology class than a traditional geography class; the focus lies largely on relationships between people, groups of people, and their environments. If sociology is interesting to you, this is a good class, especially for a GE. There were only four assignments, which were each short (two page, double spaced) written responses to the reading. There is a decent amount of reading, but the main points are covered in lecture, so you can skate by without doing any of it, if you like to live life on the edge.
Professor Faier is clearly passionate about the subject matter and often referenced her own work during lectures. Lectures are never recorded, which means skipping class is very risky, especially if you don't do the reading. Lecture slides are posted afterwards, but are pretty useless without the spoken content because they mostly amount to a bunch of pictures interspersed with random quotes from the reading.
My TA, Richard, was excellent. He was very knowledgeable about the course material and super approachable. Discussions mostly amounted to reviews of lecture content to make sure you'd been paying attention, alongside supplemental videos and short "discuss with the person next to you."
Some reviewers for other classes have brought up Faier's responses (or lack thereof) to students making ignorant statements and overall handling of minority issues. While it wasn't present in every class, there were definitely some strange moments throughout the quarter, either with students making borderline xenophobic and stereotyping comments, or Professor Faier discussing transgender people in a way I can only describe as "weird for a professor who also teaches a 'Feminist' course." Although it didn't impact my appreciation for the course content, I would not take a class from her which focuses particularly on minority issues.